


Microscopic

by Teleportation_Magic



Series: Lenses [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, But not all of it, Family, Gen, Most of this is Odin's fault, Odin B- Parenting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-03
Updated: 2020-01-26
Packaged: 2021-02-18 01:42:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21519841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teleportation_Magic/pseuds/Teleportation_Magic
Summary: Odin sits on Hlidskjalf and there is nothing in the nine that does not cross his eye.
Relationships: Frigga & Odin, Hela & Odin (Marvel), Loki & Odin, Thor & Odin
Series: Lenses [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1546240
Comments: 4
Kudos: 36





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Here's another ancillary piece I'm posting, rather than touching PtaT.

Loki stood there, insolent, indolent, in the throne room, he looked at Odin, challenge in the tilt of his head, challenge in the slant of his shoulders, challenge in the set of his eyes. Odin did not want to look at him ( _Hela_ ) and he sent Loki away. The whelp was unrelenting, unashamed at what he’d done – he deserved no quarter, no mercy, for the devastation he’d wrought. (He would not put his head under the axe, oh Norns, hela, hela, hela)

He tucked the child away and resolved to think of him of more than the other of his children who’d spewed rot over the nine realms. (Naturally, the two crossed his mind again and again and again, twin wolves drowning each other, flaying him alive.)

* * *

He would not go down to visit his son. He did not want to see the challenge, the accusation, again. Loki had erred, so Loki sits in the cell, to wait out the rest of his life, as the boy deserved.

Odin was watchful.

People so often thought that it was Heimdall’s sight that saw everything in the Nine. And while they weren’t wrong, they weren’t exactly right either.

Heimdall could see everything in the Nine at once. It was almost incredible, the scope if his memory and concentration, to be able to see and focus and remember everything. But that came with flaws – namely, he wouldn’t notice if he didn’t see something. So, wards could be erected to keep him out.

Hlidskjalf did not work the same way. It was microscope, and with it, Odin could see past anything designed to keep him away. Loki’s careful runework was but one of those things. So, when he was told by Thor he was dead, well.

Odin would look again. Look at the mess it had created the first time (he should have looked; he should have found his son).

So, he looked.

He had taken glimpses of his children every day after (after her banishment, after Thor’s exile, after Loki’s return, he couldn’t remember when he’d started.)

Hela, slaughtering her way through Helheim (even after all these years, she was still gifted with the sword (what was he going to do about her?)). Thor, learning his way around diplomacy (finally, finally he was cautious, now that he did not have someone else to do the thinking for him). He looked at Loki, curled up, blank eyed, in the corner of his cell (You could have stopped it and you didn’t.)

(You couldn’t save any of them. They had to save themselves. You made each as brittle as glass, and only one came out better for having been broken.)

And if he let out a scream when he saw his son impaled on the brute’s sword, who knew? Who saw? He was alone, a foolish man in a foolish castle, having made a foolish decision, and reaping the consequences. He took his gaze away from Loki and settled on Hela again. He sat, and wept, alone and in private as his oldest son fought for the Nine as he had failed.

(And he shouldn’t be grieving them, not those two, he had one son, one perfect son, why couldn’t he focus on his one perfect son?

(Perfect son? How long had he held that? His son (not-son(son(never, never, never, not yours, not even like Hela (but yet)))) was a liar, but had the boy spoke true about that?

(He had.))

Odin kept his back straight. The illusion covered up the falling tears, as he sat in his gold backed chair, each member of his house gone.

(Three or five? Three or five? Any good Aesir would say three, yet he clung to sentiment.)

* * *

Hours later, he decided that he needed to see. He needed to see – was there another miracle, by sheer force of chance, by the boy's admittedly clever ingenuity? (He could not make the same mistake again.) And when the chair showed Loki (his son (no, no, no)) far, far away, on Midgard of all places, the burst of relief that he felt was no one’s business but his own. Most peculiarly, he was playing with two small children, each draped over his midsection, while one of Thor’s Midgardian friends looked over at them. He stayed silent.

Odin took a motion to stand up, to go and grab his eldest son and ask him to bring the boy back home, before stopping. He hesitated and sat down.

Loki’s lips were upturned, his face peaceful. Should the need arrive, Thor could be taken straight to Loki’s location. There was no reason to rush. And maybe. Maybe Frigga might be right in saying he wasn’t completely gone. Maybe she might forgive him, for everything she eld against him.

And if there was a tendril of hope blossoming in his chest, that was no one’s business but his own.

* * *

Thor was mourning.

Thor was mourning, and he was lying again and again and again.

_Father, may I go look for Loki’s body?_

_No Thor._ He had replied. _No. Mulsiphiem is splitting in half, now that the elves are gone, I cannot afford your death._

(Heir and a spare heir and a spare heir and a spare)

The last time they met, they were united in vengeance only. Odin did not want to lose his son. Not forever, not if there was a way out.

There seemed to be a way out.

He lied and lied and lied.

* * *

Loki was happy.

It was one of the first things he noticed. He wondered how he’d never seen its absence before.

It was in the small ways; in the ways his lips would curl up whenever the children came near him. It was apparent in how he would carry himself, lighter and more stable all at the same time. He saw it when Loki would open up around the others in Barton’s small home, the way he never complained about their establishments, despite the fact that he’d complain for days in Vanaheim’s capital.

He looked less and less like his mother’s son as the days passed, and Odin wasn’t quite sure how he felt about that. He seemed less and less like how Odin remembered him (on the edge of the Bifrost, _no Loki_ , he was falling, falling, falling and Odin could not catch him), yet unrecognizable from the child that Odin had raised. When he tutored the girl (he agreed to tutoring, he never had on Asgard, no matter how much Odin had asked him) he seemed to enjoy it, to revel in it. And Odin had nothing to say.

Thor came up to him once. “Father, are you sure Loki’s dead?”

It struck Odin, within half a moment – he had not told his son. In the next, he hesitated. Loki is… maybe he needs space. Maybe… Odin doesn’t know. He waited for too long.

“Father?”

And always, every damn time his two sons have met in the past five years, there has been conflict. Again and again and again, and Odin does not want to see it swallow another realm.

“Father? I am-”

Odin took a breath. “Thor…” His voice was heavy. Thor looked at him, and he took what he did.

“I understand.” His smile was heartbreaking. Odin breathed.

When he finally, finally told his wife, she slapped him.

“He’s alive?”

“Yes?” Odin felt confusion wash over him.

“You didn’t tell me?” She looked like she wanted to cry while Odin cursed his memory.

They did not sleep in the same room that night. Nor did they the next. But eventually, they did, when Odin told her about his exploits, and she laughed and wept within each breath.

* * *

When his son returned with news on his lips that Loki was alive, Odin felt a flash of horror run through him.

Frigga realized the same thing, before donning a mask, and celebrating with him. Odin felt his face blank through it. Thor did not look happy, mearely hesitant, and he pursed his lips before telling Odin a story.

First there is rage. Rage, undying rage, rage that in another time would swallow the doers with fire and fury. As it is, he holds his tongue, and his son tells him that the men are dead, and viscous satisfaction runs through him like words on a drunkard’s tongue. He tamps it down (Loki is a murderer, a kinslayer, who is Odin to cloud his own vision because he is family (not family, fool, do you not recall?)). And when Thor continued and told him of scars, of Loki and _Thanos_ , well. If Odin accelerated the timeline for dealing with that problem, he would be the only one to know. (You should have looked Borsson, you have the only tool in the Nine Realms that could have seen it and you didn’t _look_.)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Frigga visits, and the two of them have A Talk.

His wife leaves and he pretends very hard he doesn’t know where she is heading (You should be following her. Coward.)

It is late into the night when she returns, long after she had left the odd metal structure Loki had been staying in. He is opening the door to their bedchambers when he spots her, taking the braids out of her hair in her nightclothes. He moves to undo them, but she turns to looks at him and he doesn’t budge. She sighs at him, and he knows he is being foolish but he will not concede the point.

“You are making yourself miserable.” She says waspishly, fingers running through her hair. “You’d feel better if you went to see your son.”

He flinches. “I doubt he would name me so.” (You know she is right.)

“Try him. He might surprise you.”

“He barely called you mother.” And then she flinches and Odin grimaces. “You understand that it is unlikely, to say the least, that he and I might ever reconcile.”

“Unlikelier still, if you never cast the die.” She pulls back the bedsheets with nary a hitch, and Odin matches her, action for action. “You are being a coward.”

She is angrier than he expected, to name him that so bluntly. (You deserve it.)

“Cautious, I’d call it.”

She snorted delicately, and he winced again. “Have you always been so adept at spinning falsehoods to cover your own eyes?”

“I will go, Frigga, when he asks. No sooner. I owe him that, at least.”

“And if he never does?”

And Odin dreads that possibility and wishes she had not brought it to light. “It is not never, yet. There is time.”

“When will it be never? Will it ever be? Or will you keep pushing, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.”

“Not yet.” He says, and he is almost pleading and by the slight tensing of her brow he thinks she hears. “Not yet.”

She turns over and sighs. “You are afraid. Deathly so.”

“My fear is not all that there is, Frigga.”

“But it is not nothing, either.” Her fingers twist in her palm, and that is not the only time he has seen the gesture today. “If you do not ask, then he will think you do not care.”

“If I do, he will think I am butting in where I am not wanted.”

“Ask.” The suggestion is simple, and yet he can’t. (Coward, the voice echoes, and he agrees, but he cannot do anything different.)

“No. Not yet.”

She sighs again, and they both turn away, heads down and eyes closed.

**Author's Note:**

> I tend to favor the more generous depictions of Odin - namely, I think he screwed up in a lot of ways, and that if he wanted to reconcile with Loki that would be a longer and far more arduous process. However, he does still care for all his children, but he also really, really doesn't want to have to deal with the myriad of ways he screwed up, because Odin hates dealing with his problems.
> 
> This was originally a one-shot, but the latter half of it spoils future developments in PtaT, so I split it in two so I might post something. I hope you like it!


End file.
